It’s been a bit over a year since I started brewing beer and Ilves IPA was the very first beer I ever brewed (brewed on December 14th 2013, bottled January 4th 2014).

I’m afraid time has not been kind to this beer, possibly at least due to my suboptimal storage conditions (I don’t have a cool place to store beer for long periods).

The beer has ended up a bit overcarbed and the flavour profile frankly isn’t great. Luckily this was the last bottle of this gyle of Ilves IPA, so no one will have to have another glass of it ever again.

If you like brewing, you should check out Beer Styles, a free iPhone and iPad app I built for browsing the 2008 BJCP style guidelines.

Since all my other picks where non-fiction, I thought I should include at least one book that isn’t depressing and based on true facts…

Surface Details turned out to be one of my favourite books from the Culture series by Iain M. Banks. In fact, I ended up reading it twice.

The full(ish) list

The (almost) full list of books I read this year. Some books that I had previously read don’t show up on my Goodreads list. Plus there might be a few others missing because of my sloppy Goodreads habits…

Brew Like a Monk (by Stan Hieronymus)

In Brew Like a Monk, Stan Hieronymus details the beers and brewing of the famous Trappist producers along with dozens of others from both Belgium and America. Sip along as you read and, if you feel yourself divinely inspired to brew some of your own, try out the tips and recipes as well!

I bottled my Baltic Amber this weekend. It’s an American Amber Ale brewed with sahti malt, hopped with Newport and Amarillo, and flavoured with a small amount of dried juniper berries (as a nod towards traditional Sahti). Fermented with Safale US-05 yeast.

You should totally install Beer Styles, a free iOS app I built for browsing the BJCP style guidelines.

The label for my Extra Sahti Bitter, which is an ESB brewed with Sahti Malt (from Viking Malt), flavoured with English hops and dried juniper berries. It was fermented with two yeasts: an English ale yeast (Fermentis S-04) and a wheat beer yeast (Fermentis WB-06).

The wheat beer yeast was used as a “clean” substitute for the bread yeast which is normally used when brewing Sahti (since you can’t be sure that bread yeast doesn’t contain miscellaneous microbes).

Beer Styles is a free iOS app I built for browsing the BJCP style guidelines. You should totally install it